The ramblings of the Global Village Idiot.

Monthly Archives: April 2013

I was sitting in on a webinar on Social Media the other day when the presenter said “You are not who you say you are – you are who Google says you are”. It reminded me of the poem – “I am not I” by Jimenez- who says he is something larger than himself. Is that true for us? If we are not who we say we are then who are we? Are we only the people who we see ourselves as or the person that other people see ? In this electronic age is there no us except as we are seen by Google?

American violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin and concert pianist Glen Gould were having a conversation once and Gould mentioned that he really didn’t mind the thought that live performances would become a thing of the past. Gould didn’t mind the thought that the future might only know music in a singular environment- no clubs or concert halls only headphones and home speakers. This got me thinking about interpersonal communications. What if we never saw or spoke to anyone else in person, never heard their voice or saw their face in person as they spoke- what if our only personal communication were through a keyboard. After the initial shock- would it be that bad or would we become used to the silence broken only by the tapping sound on the keys?

Google just announced an Inactive account Manager on the Google account settings page so you to tell Google what you want done with your digital assets when you die or can no longer use your account. So if you die is your electronic legacy gone with you? What do you think?http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/googles-afterlife/

I just read that retailers were using the weather to target location-based mobile ads to pitch weather related goods and services. We may be connected to our landscape in a whole new manner our surroundings were made up of physical things where our landscape may now be made up of information. Not so much where we are but how fast we can get to something.